What’s New
The Dartmouth College men’s basketball team filed a petition to unionize with the National Labor Relations Board on Wednesday. The Service Employees International Union, Local 560 petitioned on behalf of all 15 players, according to the case docket.
The Backdrop
This action comes during a push for college athletes to be viewed as employees, not just students, and receive the federal rights and protections that come with employee status. Some experts and advocates have long argued that the student vs. employee debate is a false dichotomy.
“There’s always this strange juxtaposition that athletes can’t be viewed as employees because then they wouldn’t be students and it’s just nonsense,” said Ellen Staurowsky, a sports media professor at Ithaca College. “That argument is just completely nonsense.”
In September 2021, Jennifer Abruzzo, the general counsel for the NLRB, issued a statement that college athletes are employees who fall under the protections of the National Labor Relations Act. She added that “misclassifying such employees as mere ‘student-athletes,’ and leading them to believe that they do not have statutory protections” violates the act.
The term “student-athlete” is a “piece of propaganda” created by the National Collegiate Athletic Association in the 1950s to prevent players from being viewed as employees, Staurowsky said. “The NCAA consciously invented it to create a narrative that would be a misdirection.” The NCAA has countered that an employer-employee relationship would fundamentally mar college sports and, more recently, its president, Charlie Baker, said that most college athletes don’t want to be employees.
The Dartmouth team’s petition follows a failed unionization attempt from football players at Northwestern University in 2014. A regional office of the NLRB approved the team’s petition, which Northwestern then appealed. The national office later effectively denied the petition while dodging some of the questions posed by the case.
In her 2021 statement, Abruzzo “indicated pretty blatantly that she wanted there to be a case — meaning that if the athletes brought a case forward, then the NLRB might look at that case differently than they had done” previously, said Mark Nagel, a professor of sport and entertainment management at the University of South Carolina.
Meanwhile, the NLRB has brought a complaint against the University of Southern California, the now-decimated Pac-12 Conference, and the NCAA that could tee up the question of athletes’ employee status for a national ruling. A hearing is set for November.
The Stakes
For college athletes, the main benefit of a union is that “you have a chance to have a legitimate seat at the table,” said Karen Weaver, an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education with expertise in college-sports media and policy. “What’s been so frustrating for athlete advocates for decades is that the seat at the table has been symbolic.”
Dartmouth doesn’t rake in millions in revenue from athletics the way that institutions in more prominent conferences do (the college is part of the Ivy League, which doesn’t offer athletic scholarships). But that doesn’t mean players have nothing to gain through collective bargaining, Weaver said. Some of the issues athletes may want to weigh in on include training schedules and the length of the season, she said. “Those kinds of decisions have real-life implications for athletes and they want a voice in controlling their experience.”
If the Dartmouth players are allowed to unionize, “it could have a domino effect in the Ivy League and also for other private schools,” Weaver said. (Only private-college employees can unionize through the NLRB.)
Unionization among college sports teams is poised to become more common, Staurowsky said. “I think that players are beginning to really understand that leaders and executives in the college-sports industry have been operating a business without recognizing the value of the labor force that has been generating the revenue.”
What to Watch For
Now that the players have filed a petition, the regional NLRB office must either approve or deny it. Dartmouth can appeal the ruling, which would bump it up to the national office.
“We have the utmost respect for our students and for unions generally. We are carefully considering this petition with the aim of responding promptly yet thoughtfully in accordance with Dartmouth’s educational mission and priorities,” a Dartmouth spokesperson said in an email.
Once the NLRB has made a final decision — which could take a while — the team must take a certified vote before they can officially unionize.
Since the Dartmouth team filed its petition at the start of the academic term, “there’s more time to pull this together,” Weaver said. If the process drags on, the team would need to refile each academic year as seniors graduate and new players join the team.
“It would be a very, very important development if the Dartmouth men’s basketball team prevails,” Staurowsky said.
